by Alexey Stepin
09/30/2003 | 11:30 PM
Well, you all know about it. Modern graphics processors from ATI and NVIDIA run incredibly fast in current computer games. They often give out one or two hundred frames per second – you don’t actually need this much. However, there is a way to load any graphics card to the full extent: by simply turning on full-screen anti-aliasing (FSAA) or anisotropic filtering (AF) or both at a time. This makes the picture much smoother, eliminates the annoying jaggies on slanting lines and increases the texture quality.
<%BANNER[article]%>You always have to pay for better quality, however, and 3D graphics is no exception. Even a most expensive graphics card may not cope with such a high workload. That’s exactly what we are going to check out today: how well modern graphics cards can handle the workload imposed by enabled FSAA.
This time we took two graphics cards that suit well for the planned investigation. The first is based on the R350 graphics chip from ATI Technologies and the second is its immediate rival based on the solution from NVIDIA – the NV35 GPU. Both cards came to us in colorful retail boxes and fully bundled with software and accessories.
Let’s take a closer look at them first.
The card from VisionTek seems to be appealing to the teenage public. At least, its package is gaudily colored and is made of translucent plastic. The front side of the box displays a psychedelic image with three strange creatures. Judging by the facial expression, they are either at the height of ecstasy or in the cramps of unbearable pain :).
The back side of the box depicts two animation-like graffiti people – a boy and a girl. The girl seems to be aiming at you with a sprayer as if she were drawing the V-shaped VisionTek’s logo on the box. Numerous slang-written captions are touting the advantages of Xtasy 9800 Pro. Overall, the box catches your attention with its bright colors and unusual material it is made of.
Here are the items, which we found in the box:
Although this graphics card is definitely a treat for computer gamers, it comes bundled with no computer games at all. The user’s manual is a multicolored poster rather than an ordinary booklet. It is not very informative and simply describes the installation process of the card into the system. So, the accessories set could be considered acceptable, but nothing beyond that.
Well, VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro is in fact an ordinary RADEON 9800 PRO based graphics card as it is perceived by ATI, but selling under the Xtasy brand. Once again, this is not bad, as ATI Technologies traditionally develops good reference design for its products.
The only deviation from the reference point we could notice is the lack of the ATI label next to the power connector. The PCB carries eight Samsung K4D263238E-GC2A memory chips with the access time of 2.8ns. The memory works at 68MHz (340MHz DDR), while the GPU is clocked at 380MHz.
The Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH VIVO graphics card came in an ordinary paper box colored with black and silver. There are no garish pictures or slang, but rather sober words about the capabilities and accessories of this product. The “MyVIVO Edition” label indicates that the card has VIVO features. The “TDH” abbreviation means TV-Output (T), DVI input (D) and Hardware monitoring (H). Overall, the package of this product is less attractive than that of VisionTek, but looks more serious as if it implied a totally different target group for this product.
Now the box is open, let’s take a look inside:
As you see, Leadtek didn’t play a miser, but accompanied their card with all necessary accessories and a lot of bundled software, including two quite good computer games. The CD-disc with the drivers contained:
Yeah, you are buying this whole lot of software together with this card.
Let’s dwell for a while on the WinFox 2.0 Hardware Monitoring System. Here are a couple of screenshots from the utility responsible for hardware monitoring:
The WinFox 2.0 suite is multi-functional. It is responsible for overclocking and monitoring as well as for gamma-correction. It can display test tables for you to adjust the display settings in the most optimal way and can show you the memory subsystem parameters. It can even remind the user who has been sitting too long at the computer that it is time to make a break. Besides, WinFox 2.0 can re-flash the graphics card’s BIOS, update the drivers and itself in the Internet and control the WinFast Personal Cinema TV-tuner. All this eats up about 8MB of RAM and reminds of itself by the Leadtek icon, which appears in the system tray.
This graphic card looks very original. The thing is that it is hidden in an aluminum cage with two vent holes covered with a protective lattice.
So, it looks more like an electronic module of a sci-fi starship or a military device rather than an ordinary 3D accelerator. Of course, we were tempted to peep inside. Having removed this aluminum case, we found the following:
As you see, the graphics card follows NVIDIA’s reference design and also is equipped with an SAA7114 video capture chip from Philips.
However, we were mostly impressed by the fact that the cooling system consisted of an aluminum base and copper ribs. We usually have it vice versa as copper is more heat-conductive than aluminum. The back side of the cover carries two fans and a thermal gasket for taking heat off the graphics card. The cooling solution works like that: the fan installed at the fastening strap takes air in and blows it through the copper heatsink. The air is then taken over by the second fan, which drives it outside and into the PC case. Overall, the cooling system seems to be very efficient, but may turn to be quite noisy. By the way, it has a unique name: Twin Turbo-II. Again, sounds impressive, but the apprehensions about the noise get stronger even stronger now :)
Although graphics card with this enhanced cooling system seems to occupy just one slot, you cannot install anything into the PCI slot, which is located next to the AGP.
The PCB carries 2.2ns memory chips working at 850MHz. The graphics core functions at 400MHz in 3D applications and at 300MHz in 2D. Overall, Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH is a high-quality product. Besides, its really impressive exterior will definitely attract a lot of potential users.
I cannot find any issues worth commenting in terms of the 2D picture quality produced by both graphics cards: it was simply impeccable in both cases. They drew an acceptable onscreen image in all resolutions up to and including 1600x1200@85Hz. However, this largely depends on the display as well, and you may get different results with a different display.
As for overclocking, Xtasy 9800 PRO didn’t hit the mark set by Club 3D RADEON 9800 PRO and ATI RADEON 9800 PRO cards and worked stably at 445Mhz core and 756MHz (378MHz DDR) memory frequency. Leadtek A350 WinFast A350 TDH VIVO did brilliantly well: 500Mhz and 950MHz for the graphics chip and memory respectively.
Now, let’s say a few words about the efficiency of the cooling systems and the noise they generate during work. We can criticize Xtasy 9800 PRO for absolutely the same issues as the original RADEON 9800 PRO in terms of the produced noise. However, it is not too loud and the cooler does its job quite well.
As for Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH, its massive cooling solution proved to be more efficient: it kept the GPU and memory chips cool even during overclocking. The aluminum case, connected to the heatsink through a thermal gasket must have contributed to it quite significantly. The two fans blowing the air through the graphics card’s case were pretty loud, but not unbearably so. So, we could put up with the noise for the sake of excellent overclocking results.
So, now it’s high time we tried to figure out how greatly the performance of contemporary High-End graphics accelerators drops as soon as we enable various modes of full-screen anti-aliasing. To make the experiment more illustrative and unbiased, we turned on maximum graphics quality settings in the benchmarks, but disabled anisotropic filtering. We also used the latest versions of the drivers (ATI Catalyst 3.6 and NVIDIA Detonator FX 45.23) available at the time when the test session was actually in progress.
Our testbed configuration looks as follows:
We used the following benchmarking software;
We also wanted to include one more gaming benchmark, Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness as it is a new game that actively uses pixel shaders version 2.0. However, the developers were late in releasing patch ver.49 for it. The patch (version 42) we had at our disposal at that time provided simply inadequate results.
So, let’s run the tests!
As you can clearly see, Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH loses more of its performance than VisionTek Xtasy 9800 PRO in the lowest resolution. However, the situation changes to the contrary further on: the faster memory subsystem helps Leadtek’s card out. Anyway, we have acceptable gaming performance everywhere, save for the FSAA 8x mode, which is too hard even for an old game like Quake 3. Moreover, you cannot enable this mode in 1600x1200 resolution, probably because the graphics memory is not enough for that. This is typical of nearly all games. All in all, this mode brings no significant visual advantages over the 4x FSAA mode, but does cause a dramatic performance hit.
We witness the same picture in Return to Castle Wolfenstein. However, we may notice that VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro is overall faster than Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH. We shouldn’t wonder, though. RTCW is based on the Quake 3 engine and, unlike its predecessor, favors graphics chips from ATI Technologies.
Note also that both cards are quite indifferent to FSAA in resolutions up to 1024x768. This may be good news for you if this is the resolution you like (or your old display supports).
Star Trek: Elite Force 2 produces somewhat different results. While Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH wins in low resolutions, the gap is getting considerably smaller in higher resolutions and with higher FSAA levels enabled. Thus, both graphics cards go neck and neck in 1600x1200. Even though this game belongs to gaming applications based on Quake3 engine from id Software, it requires a lot of hardware resources. As a result, you can get acceptable gaming performance with enabled FSAA 4x only in 1024x768 resolution. FSAA 8x allows you to enjoy a kind of slide-show: you will hardly be able to play like that.
Three flyby scenes – inferno, antalus and asbestos – were run in our testing. All of them strain the graphics chip a lot and are scaleable. I think that the inferno demo features most complex geometry. Let’s start with it:
There can’t be two opinions: Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH gains the upper hand over VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro thanks to its high-performing memory subsystem. On the other hand, the RADEON-based card suffers a smaller performance drop when higher levels of FSAA are enabled. So, we have every right to state that R350 architecture is perfectly fit for work even in the hardest FSAA modes.
VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro wins in the antalus demo in 1024x768. In higher resolutions, the more powerful memory subsystem and tricky drivers from NVIDIA put Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH on top.
The asbestos flyby demo differs a lot from antalus or inferno by its closed rooms, relatively simple geometry, but numerous textures instead. So, the new testing conditions and different type of workload let VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro win in 1024x768 resolution. In 1280x1024, there is no winner, both products prove equally fast. And only in 1600x1200 higher working frequencies allow Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH to become the leader in pure speed and FSAA 2x modes. When the FSAA level is increased to 4x, we witness the parity again.
We ran two demos in this game: The Grand Cathedral and Elephant Atrium.
This demo is rather simple as far as textures are concerned, but features many models, therefore the graphics chip has to handle a lot of geometry. RADEON 9800 PRO stands the blow much better here. While WinFast A350 TDH is faster in 1024x768 and 1280x1024, both cards level out in 1600x1200.
The Elephant Atrium demo features large spaces, fewer monsters, and, accordingly, low geometric workload. As most objects in a frame (trees, monuments) have just one texture, VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro handles them well. Its architecture (8 pipelines with 1 TMU per each) suits perfectly for tasks like that.
Codecreatures is a very hard test that can destroy any graphics processor: complex geometry, crisp textures and shaders. VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro is about 5-8 fps behind Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH, but suddenly goes ahead in 1600x1200 in the pure speed mode. Regrettably, NVIDIA is pretty know for cheating in popular benchmarks. That’s why I wouldn’t conclude that GeForce FX 5900 is better than RADEON 9800 here. The belief in “wondrous drivers” that increase performance without losing any of the image quality ended after there appeared cheats and “application-specific optimizations”.
Overall, our testing showed the following. Graphics cards based on the NVIDIA NV35 GPU cope well with anti-aliasing in games that don’t use shaders. High processing speed of relatively simple geometry and a fast memory subsystem contribute to this a lot. ATI R350-based cards, however, slow down less quickly with the increasing level of FSAA. Moreover, ATI’s chips look much better than NVIDIA’s in modern games that use actively pixel and vertex shaders. A striking example is Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.
So, my resume is simple: if you play current games, you may find Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH an excellent solution, but you’d better buy something like VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro to play comfortably the upcoming games like Half-Life 2, Stalker: Oblivion Lost and Doom III.
As for the particular cards we have tested today, we liked them both. However, Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH made a better impression due to its original looks and rich accessories set. Both products have advantages and shortcomings, of course, and they are both a good buy: Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH would suit well for those who need high performance in modern games and dabble at video editing, while VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro would make a good card for computer gamers who wan their system to last longer in the future.
VisionTek Xtasy 9800 Pro
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Leadtek WinFast A350 TDH
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